Charles Portis - True Grit

“You will do like I tell you.”

“The horses will be all right.”

“You have not seen enough killing tonight?”

“I am not staying here by myself.”

We started back over the ridge together. I said, “Wait, I will go back and get my revolver,” but he grabbed me roughly and pulled me along after him and I left the pistol behind. He found us a place behind a big log that offered a good view of the hollow and the dugout. We kicked the snow back so that we could rest on the leaves underneath. Rooster loaded his rifle from a sack of cartridges and placed the sack on the log where he would have it ready at hand. He got out his revolver and put a cartridge into the one chamber that he kept empty under the hammer. The same shells fit his pistol and rifle alike. I thought you had to have different kinds. I bunched myself up inside the slicker and rested my head against the log. Rooster ate a corn dodger and offered me one.

I said, “Strike a match and let me look at it first.”

“What for?” said he.

“There was blood on some of them.”

“We ain’t striking no matches.”

“I don’t want it then. Let me have some taffy.”

“It is all gone.”

I tried to sleep but it was too cold. I cannot sleep when my feet are cold. I asked Rooster what he had done before he became a Federal marshal.

“I done everything but keep school,” said he.

“What was one thing that you did?” said I.

“I skinned buffalo and killed wolves for bounty out on the Yellow House Creek in Texas. I seen wolves out there that weighed a hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Did you like it?”

“It paid well enough but I didn’t like that open country. Too much wind to suit me. There ain’t but about six trees between there and Canada. Some people like it fine. Everything that grows out there has got stickers on it.”

“Have you ever been to California?”

“I never got out there.”

“My Grandfather Spurling lives in Monterey, California. He owns a store there and he can look out his window any time he wants to and see the blue ocean. He sends me five dollars every Christmas. He has buried two wives and is now married to one called Jenny who is thirty-one years of age. That is one year younger than Mama. Mama will not even say her name.”

“I fooled around in Colorado for a spell but I never got out to California. I freighted supplies for a man named Cook out of Denver.”

“Did you fight in the war?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Papa did too. He was a good soldier.”

“I expect he was.”

“Did you know him?”

“No, where was he?”

“He fought at Elkhorn Tavern in Arkansas and was badly wounded at Chickamauga up in the state of Tennessee. He came home after that and nearly died on the way. He served in General Churchill’s brigade.”

“I was mostly in Missouri.”

“Did you lose your eye in the war?”

“I lost it in the fight at Lone Jack out of Kansas City. My horse was down too and I was all but blind. Cole Younger crawled out under a hail of fire and pulled me back. Poor Cole, he and Bob and Jim are now doing life in the Minnesota pen. You watch, when the truth is known, they will find it was Jesse W. James that shot that cashier in Northfield.”

“Do you know Jesse James?”

“I don’t remember him. Potter tells me he was with us at Centralia and killed a Yankee major there. Potter said he was a mean little viper then, though he was only a boy. Said he was meaner than Frank. That is going some, if it be so. I remember Frank well. We called him Buck then. I don’t remember Jesse.”

“Now you are working for the Yankees.”

“Well, the times has changed since Betsy died. I would have never thought it back then. The Red Legs from Kansas burned my folks out and took their stock. They didn’t have nothing to eat but clabber and roasting ears. You can eat a peck of roasting ears and go to bed hungry.”

“What did you do when the war was over?”

“Well, I will tell you what I done. When we heard they had all give up in Virginia, Potter and me rode into Independence and turned over our arms. They asked us was we ready to respect the Government in Washington city and take a oath to the Stars and Stripes. We said yes, we was about ready. We done it, we swallowed the puppy, but they wouldn’t let us go right then. They give us a one-day parole and told us to report back in the morning. We heard there was a Kansas major coming in that night to look over everybody for bushwhackers.”

“What are bushwhackers?”

“I don’t know. That is what they called us. Anyhow, we was not easy about that Kansas major. We didn’t know but what he would lock us up or worse, us having rode with Bill Anderson and Captain Quantrill. Potter lifted a revolver from a office and we lit out that night on two government mules. I am still traveling on the one-day parole and I reckon that jayhawker is waiting yet. Now our clothes was rags and we didn’t have the price of a plug of tobacco between us. About eight mile out of town we run into a Federal captain and three soldiers. They wanted to know if they was on the right road for Kansas City. That captain was a paymaster, and we relieved them gents of over four thousand in coin. They squealed like it was their own. It didn’t belong to nobody but the Government and we needed a road stake.”

“Four thousand dollars?”

“Yes, and all in gold. We got their horses too. Potter taken his half of the money and went down to Arkansas. I went to Cairo, Illinois, with mine and started calling myself Burroughs and bought a eating place called The Green Frog and married a grass widow. It had one billiard table. We served ladies and men both, but mostly men.”

“I didn’t know you had a wife.”

“Well, I don’t now. She taken a notion she wanted me to be a lawyer. Running a eating place was too low-down for her. She bought a heavy book called Daniels on Negotiable Instruments and set me to reading it. I never could get a grip on it. Old Daniels pinned me every time. My drinking picked up and I commenced staying away two and three days at a time with my friends. My wife did not crave the society of my river friends. She got a bellyful of it and decided she would go back to her first husband who was clerking in a hardware store over in Paducah. She said, ‘Goodbye, Reuben, a love for decency does not abide in you.’ There is your divorced woman talking about decency. I told her, I said, ‘Goodbye, Nola, I hope that little nail-selling bastard will make you happy this time.’ She took my boy with her too. He never did like me anyhow. I guess I did speak awful rough to him but I didn’t mean nothing by it. You would not want to see a clumsier child than Horace. I bet he broke forty cups.”

“What happened to The Green Frog?”

“I tried to run it myself for a while but I couldn’t keep good help and I never did learn how to buy meat. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was like a man fighting bees. Finally I just give up and sold it for nine hundred dollars and went out to see the country. That was when I went out to the staked plains of Texas and shot buffalo with Vernon Shaftoe and a Flathead Indian called Olly. The Mormons had run Shaftoe out of Great Salt Lake City but don’t ask me about what it was for. Call it a misunderstanding and let it go at that. There is no use in you asking me questions about it, for I will not answer them. Olly and me both taken a solemn oath to keep silent. Well, sir, the big shaggies is about all gone. It is a damned shame. I would give three dollars right now for a pickled buffalo tongue.”

“They never did get you for stealing that money?”

“I didn’t look on it as stealing.”